The Government has denied it plans to announce a complete split between professional training for adult and children’s social workers. At last week’s meeting of the Conservative Party’s Social Work Commission, the Social Care Institute for Excellence’s chair Allan Bowman said the move was imminent.

A hearing into the conduct of a Registered Social Worker from Lincoln will be held on 22 May 2007 by the social care workforce regulator for England the General Social Care Council (GSCC).

An £8bn increase in NHS spending in England this year will buy 390,000 extra operations, 400,000 more outpatient appointments and a new outreach service to help thousands of vulnerable people with long-term medical conditions such as diabetes and asthma, Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, said yesterday.

Nannies who can speak a second language, play the violin or cook like Jamie Oliver are commanding record salaries in the childcare market, driven by the desires of ambitious parents to give their children a head start.

A social worker drowned his disabled baby son in a bath because he could not cope with the pain that the child was suffering, a court was told. Andreas Milakovic, a German national who is deaf and cannot speak, wept in the dock as the story of his “mercy killing” was told at Sheffield Crown Court.

Town hall chiefs have rejected official immigration figures which they say grossly underestimate the real numbers. The revolt came after the latest count claimed there were 60,000 fewer immigrants living in London than previously estimated.

Alzheimer’s drugs currently being denied to some NHS patients may have a dramatic impact on the pathology of the brain, research in the UK indicates.

{mosimage}Neurology says that post-mortem tests on 24 patients found a 70% fall of a protein linked to dementia in those who had taken cholinesterase inhibitors. Campaigners are fighting to get the drugs available on the NHS after they were rejected for use in mild cases.

Experts said the study was interesting but small and inconclusive as a result. Post mortem examinations were done on 12 patients who took part in UK trials of the drugs – donepezil, rivastigmine, tacrine and galantamine.

Professor Clive Ballard, director of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, and colleagues measured the concentrations of two proteins associated with the build up of plaques found in the brains with people with dementia.

Levels of suicide and self-harming are soaring in mental health wards where there are few activities, locked wards and constant surveillance, according to a major study. Patients are self-harming and even attempting suicide because of the “prison-like” conditions they are kept in according to the evaluation of over acute psychiatric wards.

A debate on the issue of anaesthetics and whether they can cause dementia to worsen has provoked a response from the chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Society.

Cancer services in England are in need of further reform in order to deliver better patient care, the government’s cancer tsar has said. Professor Mike Richards said simple tests and treatments should be made available closer to patients’ homes.